The story of 83 American captives and the "Digit Affair"

atlasobscura.com

33 pointsCozumel2 comments

"The triumphant reign of the Hawaiian Good Luck sign came to an abrupt end when Time magazine published a photo of the men and pointed out their ruse, writing in the caption that “three of the crewmen have managed to use the medium for a message, furtively getting off the U.S. hand signal of obscene derisiveness and contempt.”

When the crew’s captors read this, they kicked off what the men would come to call “Hell Week,” beating the crewmen mercilessly for days"

Fucking hell, I would really hope that whoever made the decision to print it faced at least some consequences. How much of an idiot do you have to be to not realize consequences of actions like this?

It par for the course from the US press. In WWII one paper printed ... something that a Congresscritter? blabbed to them that our subs were avoiding IJN depth charges because their crush depth was deeper than the Japanese realized. Needless to say, this resulted in our losing a lot more, the sub service ended up losing 20% of its men (almost all sub defeats kill the entire crew), and that's when it became "The Silent Service", not for silent running, but for not saying anything they didn't have to about what they were doing.

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